We investigate how firms adapt to trademark protection, an extensively used but underexamined form of IP protection, by exploring a historical precedent: China's trademark law of 1923---an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China. By exploiting a unique, newly...

We study the positive and normative effects of counterfeiting, i.e.,trademark infringement, in markets where consumers are not deceived by forgeries.The fact that consumers are willing to pay more for counterfeits than for generic merchandise of similar quality suggests that they value the...

Much recent research in the economics of information has analyzed the implications of alternative market structures in the presence of qualitative characteristics which cannot be accurately and objectively measured or described. This approach avoids the more basic question of the influence of...

This paper reports on the construction of a new dataset that combines data on trademark applications and registrations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with data on firms from the U.S. Census Bureau. The resulting dataset allows tracking of various activity related to trademark use and...

A policy debate centers around the question how news aggregators such as Google News affect traffic to online news sites. Many publishers view aggregators as substitutes for traditional news consumption while aggregators view themselves as complements because they make news discovery easier. We...

Despite the concern that student plagiarism has become increasingly common, there is relatively little objective data on the prevalence or determinants of this illicit behavior. This study presents the results of a natural field experiment designed to address these questions. Over 1,200 papers...

This examination of the role and potential for replication in economics points out the paucity of both pure replication -- checking on others' published papers using their data -- and scientific replication -- using data representing different populations in one's own work or in a Comment....

New information technology has reduced marginal production and distribution costs of information goods to negligible levels and promises to revolutionize many industries. Unpaid copies of digital products can be as good as paid first-generation copies, and their availability can undermine the...

This paper examines the welfare effects of intellectual property protection, accounting for firms' optimal responses to legal environments and technological innovation. I examine firms' use of indirect price discrimination in response to U.S. copyright law, which effectively prevents direct...